1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to audio reproduction, and more particularly to reduction of power consumption in audio conferencing system components through frequency filtered signal routing.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Audio conferencing systems have become an increasingly popular and valuable business communications tool. Conferencing systems are often connected to a network, such as the public-switched telephone network, and are thus being utilized to facilitate natural communication between persons or groups of persons located remotely from each other.
Enterprise conference or meeting rooms are typically configured with conferencing systems, often with an audio console being the centerpiece of the conference table. Configuring a conference room as such maximizes the pick-up range of the integrated microphones to efficiently capture as much of the local speech as possible, and maximizes the audible range of the audio reproduced by the integrated speakers. Configuring a conference room with a conferencing system which has one or more audio consoles located on one or more conference tables has an inherent disadvantage when utilizing a xe2x80x9cwiredxe2x80x9d system because connecting cables must be routed from a power source to the table-top console and possibly among various table-top consoles or other system components. Therefore, there is a need for a wireless conferencing system.
A wireless conferencing system may be configured with either all components being battery or otherwise internally powered, or possibly with some components being internally powered and a main unit being externally powered. Development of a wireless conferencing system must overcome the ever-present trade-off between power supply/availability and system component/battery size.
In addition, components of a wired conferencing system employed in a large conference room may be xe2x80x9cdaisy-chainedxe2x80x9d or connected in series. Power availability in such a system configuration needs addressing since the power supply and the cables connecting the system components must provide enough power to supply the entire series arrangement.
In addressing the power issues in both wireless and wired conferencing systems, one possible solution is to offer more power to system components. This is not an optimal solution, especially in a wireless system including battery-powered components. An alternative solution, which is additionally needed in the art, is a system and method for reducing power consumption in an audio conferencing system.
Systems and methods are provided for reducing power requirements of an internally powered console in a wireless networked conferencing system. The system includes a base unit having a network interface for receiving an signal representative of speech or other acoustic information from a remote conference endpoint. The base unit includes a filter system for splitting the signal into low-frequency component and high-frequency component signals. The low-frequency component signal is routed over an electrical connection to a first audio driver for reproduction of the low-frequency portion of the acoustic information. The high-frequency component signal is routed to a transmitter, which encodes the signal for transmission over a wireless channel to the internally powered console. The console includes a receiver for receiving and decoding the high-frequency component signal and a second audio driver, coupled to the receiver, for reproducing the high-frequency portion of the acoustic information. By removing the need to reproduce the low-frequency portion of the acoustic information, the console""s power consumption is reduced and battery life is correspondingly lengthened. The base unit may additionally include a delay module for delaying the low-frequency component signal relative to the high-frequency component signal in order to localize the conference participants"" attention to the console.
The power requirement reduction technique described is equally applicable to externally powered audio reproduction components that may benefit from reduced power requirements, and audio systems other than conferencing systems, in which audio drivers are internally powered.